Lunch and learn

Cooking enthusiasts gather around a counter to learn how to make international foods

March 17, 2010|By Diane Stoneback | Of The Morning Call

Travel-minded guests can taste their way around the world without leaving Bethlehem, thanks to Dianna Kish's ''Lunch Around the Counter'' sessions.

Scheduled at lunch time, the program tempts would-be participants to take an hourlong break from their offices and desks for a quick escape to a far-away place.

But that doesn't mean guests won't be multi-tasking at these events, which are a cross between a chef's table-style experience and a cooking class. They'll just have more fun doing it.

In an hour's time, the guests will learn more about a different country's lunch-time fare, learn how to make the dishes Kish prepares and finish off with a three- or four-course lunch to savor before going back to work.

It's much more up-close and personal than the standard cooking class, where members sit back in the audience and watch, often with the help of overhead mirrors, as the instructor works her way through the dishes.

Each session at Northampton Community College's Fowler Family Southside Center in Bethlehem is limited to 10 participants. They sit around the demo kitchen's work counter while Kish makes their lunches. They can ask questions and chat while Kish chops, mixes, sautes and bakes the foods they're going to eat.

But there's a danger to sitting so close to the culinary action. Because you can see everything, pick up every aroma and savor all of the sizzle, you'll really work up an appetite for your lunch!

You'll understand why one participant in Kish's last session remarked, ''I don't need the strawberries or the cubes of angel food cake. I could just drink the rest of this chocolate fondue.''

The rich, dark fondue was the dessert Kish selected for her most recent session called ''Swiss Gasthaus.'' Other Swiss foods on the menu were Pastetli (open-faced meat pies containing chicken and mushrooms flavored with white wine and sour cream), Gruyere cheese-filled ramekins and rosti potatoes flavored with Dijon mustard and chopped scallions.

Next month, Kish's lunch guests will visit the Netherlands. In May, they'll be off to Belgium for a cafe-style lunch. In the fall, her international ''travels'' will conclude with Lunch Around the Counter sessions featuring Russian, German and Polish fare.

During the spring 2011 semester, she and her lunch pals will explore the regional cuisine of the United States.

The international foods she prepares for her hourlong lunch sessions are not necessarily fast foods. To make them ''happen'' with such time constraints, she often takes extra steps to shorten the cooking time, from spending the morning of the class doing the prep work or even pre-cooking some ingredients like browning off ground beef. ''I'm not really worried about that because most people already know how to do it,'' she says.

Deciding on the foods for her British session presented a major challenge to finishing in just 60 minutes or just a few minutes more. ''British foods often cook for hours and then you have to add them to the final dish that cooks for hours more,'' she says. She made faster-cooking, individual shepherd's pies, rather than making a large casserole for the counter crowd.

''In an hour's time, I like to prepare four or five dishes -- usually an appetizer, a main course, a salad and dessert,'' she explains. ''But depending on how long a dish takes, I sometimes have to use some 'TV-style magic' by making a dish in advance for serving to guests but also showing them all of the steps to make it themselves.''

So how does she decide on countries she features?

''I have to know something about the food because I know someone who'll show me how to make it or be familiar with it from my own personal experiences. I won't just get my information from cookbooks,'' she says.

Having international ties in the family has been a world of help. ''My father-in-law is from Hungary. My mother-in-law is from Poland. My sister-in-law is from Russia and my aunt is from Mexico. And half my family has Irish ties.''

She adds, ''I was born in Germany when my dad was in the service.''

So far, she has lived in 29 places and says, ''I guess I've just been very lucky.''

Wherever she goes and meets someone new, she says, ''I'm always asking them how and what they cook and whether or not they'll give me recipes.''

Being a Swedish exchange student also flavored her future direction.

''I still enjoy making Swedish meatballs, but they are never in a cream sauce. They're just little meatballs served with lingonberry jelly.

''I also sampled moose and reindeer and enjoyed them. I even like lutefisk (a dried cod dish), but I will never re-create polsa. It's made with parts of an animal that won't sell. They're boiled into a gelatinous mass that gets topped with chopped pickled beets and pepper.''

She describes herself as a ''survivalist'' cook because she wanted to know much more about food than she ever learned at home. ''My mother made everything with three spices -- salt, pepper and ketchup,'' she says.